


it's life, but not as we know it

by Fiver



Series: only going forward 'cause we can't find reverse [1]
Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Science Fiction, Alternate Universe - Space, M/M, idiots in space
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-14
Updated: 2015-04-14
Packaged: 2018-03-22 19:17:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,013
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3740530
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fiver/pseuds/Fiver
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Grantaire doesn't always rescue handsome strangers from mobs of angry bounty hunters, but when he does, he's rewarded with an unregistered species of alien running amok on his ship, instead of the much-preferable 'thank you' kiss he'd been hoping for.</p>
            </blockquote>





	it's life, but not as we know it

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on tumblr as a response to a prompt, but I thought I'd post it here too because it could potentially become part of a series - I feel like this dumb AU has a lot more to give.
> 
> And I know, I should be working on my other fics, but I needed a break to just write something fun and ridiculous :'D

 

\--

Grantaire shoots a long-suffering look at his ship’s teleportation pad as it makes laboured whirring noises and gives a few pathetic beeps. His whole dashing-rescue thing had been going so _well_ – very suavely, if he did say so himself – until this piece of junk had decided to show its age and break down midway through beaming him and the subject of his dashing rescue aboard.

“Um,” says the young man in Grantaire’s arms. (At least, Grantaire thinks they’re a man, but he’ll have to check that with them – it’s never good to assume these things. Especially not in the far reaches of space.) “Is this going to take much longer?”

“System reboot is eighty-four per cent complete,” Joly chirps from the nearby control panel. “Teleportation should resume in approximately four minutes.”

Grantaire tries not to groan out loud. Four minutes might be a very short time in the grand scheme of things, but it’s a pretty long time to wait when your head and torso are floating aimlessly on your spaceship and your legs are still on the planet below.

“This is pretty embarrassing, huh?” Joly goes on, sounding far too cheerful about it. “You looked cool for about five seconds there, R.”

“I’m the coolest guy this side of the galaxy,” Grantaire says. “It’s this piece of shit transporter that’s uncool.”

“Still, thank you for saving me,” the man (?) says. He glances down at the empty space where the lower half of his body should be. “Or, um, half of me, so far.”

“All in a day’s work,” Grantaire says graciously, as if it’s really nothing out of the ordinary for him to swoop in and save a handsome stranger from an angry mob of aliens twice his size.

Four minutes turns out to be long enough for him to learn that his handsome stranger is named Enjolras, and yes, he is a man, and he’s an Earthling just like Grantaire.

“Are you sure?” Grantaire says, grinning. “If you ask me, you’re too pretty to be human.”

“I’m fairly sure,” Enjolras replies just as their legs finish materialising at last. “You can let go of me now, you know.”

“I can hold on a little longer if you need me to,” Grantaire says generously. His arms have been looped loosely around Enjolras’s waist ever since he grabbed him on the planet’s surface so that they could be transported together. Unnecessary, really, but he’d thought it added a gallant touch to the whole adventure. “You had a frightening experience, it’s fine if you need some comforting, you know?”

Enjolras delicately detaches him and hops off the transporter pad. Joly comes forward to meet him.

“Hello,” he says, still sounding cheerful. “I’m Joly. I’m going to disinfect you now.”

“What?” Enjolras blinks.

“Joly, I don’t think that’s necessary…” Grantaire protests.

“We don’t know where he’s been,” Joly says. He whips off his right hand and just as quickly replaces it with his dreaded rotating scrub brush attachment.

“Oh,” Enjolras says in surprise. “You’re a robot.”

“Yeah, he started off as just your standard cleaning and maintenance droid?” Grantaire says. “But this one time, I was really drunk and I took us through a warp hole because that seems like a great idea when you’re drunk, and when we came out the other side he somehow had his own personality. Weird, right?”

“…You’re saying you accidentally created the galaxy’s first AI?” Enjolras says. He sounds incredulous – and also slightly pained, probably due to the vigorous scouring Joly is subjecting him to.

“Told you I was cool,” Grantaire says with a wink.

“You really shouldn’t give yourself that much credit,” Joly says. He replaces the scrub brush with his vacuum attachment and starts vacuuming every speck of dust off of Enjolras’s clothes. Just as he finishes that, Bossuet emerges from the sleeping quarters.

“Oh, look who decided to wake up,” Grantaire says.

“Good morning,” Bossuet says, smiling. Joly gives him a perfunctory once-over with the vacuum before giving him a hug. “Did you manage to get some supplies down on that planet, R?”

“No, but I found something better,” Grantaire says, gesturing grandly to Enjolras, who is suddenly frowning.

“You were down there looking for _supplies?_ ” he says. “That’s…that’s an uncharted planet. There’s literally nothing there.” He looks at the three of them in turn. “Do you guys even know what side of the galaxy you’re on?”

“Hey, it’s not about the destination, it’s about the journey,” Grantaire says sagely.

“ _Seriously?”_

“What were you doing down there, then?” Grantaire challenges.

“And why were those guys chasing you?” Joly asks. He’s replaying footage of their dramatic escape from Enjolras’s pursuers on the nearest screen. “They look like bounty hunters on the hunt for rare species. What did they want with an Earthling? You aren’t exactly uncommon.”

“Maybe they also thought you were too pretty to be human,” Grantaire suggests. “A rare beauty, if not a rare species.”

“Your pick-up lines are getting worse,” Bossuet remarks before looking at Enjolras. “He is trying very, very hard to flirt with you, by the way, in case it wasn’t clear.”

“They were chasing me because I interfered with their work,” Enjolras says. “They wrecked my shuttle, too. If you could take me back to my ship, I’d be very grateful.”

“What do you mean, you interfered with their work?” Grantaire asks. Enjolras shifts somewhat awkwardly. He has a satchel slung over one shoulder, and Grantaire suddenly notices that it’s moving.

“You’re right, they were bounty hunters. I don’t like bounty hunters,” Enjolras says. He flips the satchel open, and a small, furry head pops out.

“What…is that?” Grantaire asks slowly.

“I, uh, don’t think it has a name. From our point of view, anyway,” Enjolras says, shrugging. “Like I said, uncharted planet.”

There’s a beat of silence.

“It’s an unregistered species,” Joly says in a slightly strangled voice.

“Yes, it’s-” Enjolras starts but is cut off when Joly flies into a frenzy that Grantaire and Bossuet had seen coming from the moment Enjolras opened his bag.

“Oh no oh no it could be diseased it could have parasites it could have anything, put it in quarantine, _put it in quarantine!_ ” Joly squeaks. A little flashing red emergency light pops out of the top of his head as he flails in horror. Their ship is, regrettably, a bit too shitty to have an actual quarantine bay, but shortly after acquiring the power of free will Joly had insisted they buy a portable one. It’s basically a giant bubble that lives in a capsule when not in use. Joly grabs it, pushes the button to inflate it and then, using his extendable claw-hand attachment, snags Enjolras’s whole satchel and throws it through the membrane.

“Good job,” Bossuet tells Joly, patting him on the head. Joly’s only response is to detach his claw-hand and throw it in the ship’s incinerator.

Inside the bubble, the creature comes wriggling out of the satchel, looking quite unfazed.

“…It’s kind of cute, huh?” Grantaire says, crouching down to get a better look at it. It sort of reminds him of an Earth rabbit, except that it has a long snout and six eyes, and also that it seems to have multiple gelatinous-looking nubs instead of legs. Actually, it’s not really so much like an Earth rabbit. “You stole it from those hunters, Enjolras?”

“Yes,” Enjolras says, folding his arms. “My friends and I do our best to foil any bounty hunters we come across. It’s despicable, taking a living creature from its natural habitat and handing it over to the central government to be researched, just for the money.”

“Not to nit-pick, but I don’t think your bag is its natural habitat, either,” Grantaire says. “Or this bubble.”

“I was going to put it back!” Enjolras says defensively. “I was going to take it back to my ship so that my friend could check whether the hunters had injured it, and then I was going to return it to its planet when the hunters were gone.”

“If it’s an undiscovered species that we know nothing about, how are you supposed to tell if it’s injured?” Bossuet asks. “And what to do about it if it is?”

Enjolras blinks a few times.

“Um,” he says.

“It’s the thought that counts,” Grantaire says encouragingly.

“Can we please head for my ship?” Enjolras asks.

“Your wish is my command,” Grantaire says with a sweeping bow. “Where is it?”

“Not too far, it should only take a few minutes travelling at warp-”

“Er,” Bossuet says.

“Yeah, our warp function broke about a year and a half ago,” Grantaire says. “And we’re not usually in any hurry to get anywhere, so…”

Enjolras sighs.

“It’ll…take a few hours, then,” he says.

“That’s not so bad,” Grantaire says. “Gives us more time to get to know each other.”

Enjolras gives him his ship’s coordinates and Grantaire goes to the bridge to plead with his clunky navigation system to take them there. When he comes back, Joly is absent, and Enjolras and Bossuet are talking.

“So you’re from Earth, huh?” Bossuet is saying. “I’m half-Earthling, myself. I’m from Ares, though.”

“…I’ve heard about the Aresian people,” Enjolras says with some trepidation. “They call them, um, ‘the destroyers of worlds’…?”

“Very true,” Grantaire says. “Bossuet’s only half-Aresian though, so he’s just the accidental-destroyer-of-everything-he-touches.”

“Ah.” Enjolras is starting to look progressively more concerned with the situation he’s landed in here.

Just then, Joly reappears carrying a small dish, which he pushes through the membrane of the quarantine bubble.

“What’s that?” Grantaire asks.

“I thought we should give it some water?” Enjolras says. “I have no idea what it would eat, but water seems like a good idea.”

The alien creature sniffs at the dish and then proceeds to dip its snout into the water.

“It’s a strange idea, actually,” Joly says.

“…Why do you say that?” Enjolras asks.

“Well, the planet that it comes from has no water on it,” Joly says, as if this should have been perfectly obvious. They all stare at him but he doesn’t seem to notice. He’s nodding to himself. “Ah, of course, Earthlings can’t survive without water. You projected a natural Earthling need onto this extra-terrestrial creature-”

“Joly, if it doesn’t need water, why did you _give_ it water?” Grantaire asks. “We don’t know what that’ll do to-”

He’s cut off by the thing in the bubble letting out a blood-chilling, guttural screech. They all turn slowly to look at it. It has roughly double in size and is growing rapidly. Also, with its mouth open, it is revealed to have a _lot_ more pointy teeth than Grantaire would have expected.

“Okay,” he says. “That’s happening.”

When the creature continues to grow to the point that it becomes clear that it’s going to break out of its bubble prison, Grantaire figures they should probably, like, do something.

“Bridge,” he says. “Let’s. All go to the bridge.”

He can’t remember the last time he did quite so much running in one day.

\--

When they get to the bridge, Grantaire casts one last, reluctant look over his shoulder before closing the doors. By this time, the alien Enjolras brought aboard is now the size of…fuck, Grantaire doesn’t even know. Two horses. Three, maybe.

There is a moment of uncomfortable silence on the bridge, during which everyone slowly turns to look at Joly.

“Don’t blame me!” he wails. “I can’t be expected to know what an organic life form needs!”

“If you knew it isn’t normally exposed to water, _why didn’t you say so before you gave it water?”_ Grantaire asks pleadingly, like if he points out how absurd it is the universe might realise and agree with him and turn back time.

“No, it’s my fault,” Enjolras says. Joly nods furiously. “Joly’s right, I projected a human need onto a non-human creature.” He buries his face in his hands. “Ugh, this is such an obvious by-product of the terranormative attitude perpetuated by the Earth education system, I thought I’d _unlearned_ all that…”

“Now is really not the time to be checking your Earthling privilege,” Grantaire says.

“It’s probably time to panic,” Bossuet says helpfully.

“We don’t know if we need to panic,” Enjolras says, lowering his hands. “I mean, I understand that having an exponentially-growing alien life-form on your ship is a _problem,_ but we don’t know that it’s necessarily hostile.”

“Right. It just chased us all the way here while making noises like an enraged elephant seal riding an enraged motorbike,” Grantaire says over the steady thumps of the thing ramming the door with its ever-increasing bulk. “Also it’s now ramming the door, that is now a thing.”

“It could be trying to communicate,” Enjolras insists. “We need to stop interpreting its actions from a limited Earthling viewpoint-”

“I’m pretty sure all of these things are signs of aggression on any planet.”

“But-”

“Okay, look, let’s ask it!” Laughing slightly hysterically, Grantaire switches on the translator at his wrist. “It’s an unregistered species, but if its language bears any resemblance to a known language we should at least be able to pick up a few words.”

“Okay, great, let’s-” Enjolras starts to say, but before he or anyone else can think of a question to formulate for their perpetually expanding guest, the translator picks up on its screeching and returns with a rough translation.

“ _FLEEEEEEEEEEEESH.”_

They all stare at the translator. Grantaire turns it off.

“It’s had its first taste of water, now it wants to try human flesh,” Bossuet says finally. “I can at least admire its openness to new things.”

“We have to get it off the ship,” Grantaire says, pulling at his own hair. “Maybe if we turn back and land on the planet, we can set it free…no, wait, it’s probably the size of like six horses by now, it wouldn’t even fit down the ramp…”

“So we need to shrink it again?” Bossuet says. “How do we do that?”

Grantaire thinks for a long moment. Then it hits him. He gasps.

“Water makes it grow!” he says.

“We had noticed,” Bossuet says.

“So, what’s the opposite of water?” Grantaire asks.

“…No water?” Enjolras tries with a blink.

“No!” Grantaire starts rummaging through the assorted detritus piled up under the main control panel until he finds what he’s looking for – an unopened bottle of space whiskey (distilled on Brewery Moon #276 – the 276th best brewery moon in the known galaxy). “Alcohol!”

“…Alcohol is not the opposite of…” Enjolras starts to say but his voice just sort of fades away before he can finish, like the statement is just so painfully, stupidly obvious that he can’t quite bring himself to even say it. Grantaire takes offense to that.

“Alcohol dehydrates!” he argues. “It, like…soaks up…water.”

“That doesn’t make it the anti-water!” Enjolras says, wringing his hands as if in an attempt to keep him from wringing Grantaire’s neck instead.

“Maybe not.” Grantaire closes his eyes and turns to bravely face the door. “But it’s the only weapon I have in this battle.”

“Speaking of which, where is your _actual_ weapon?” Joly pipes up. “Your phaser.”

“…It’s charging,” Grantaire says with a scowl.

“You’re not going out there?” Enjolras says, aghast. “You can’t, it’s right outside the door!”

“Oh hey, yeah, you’re right.” Grantaire turns away from the door and heads for the corner instead, where he starts clearing empty bottles and take-out containers off of the transporter pad there. Enjolras seems to notice, for the first time, just how messy the bridge really is, and takes a moment to wrinkle his nose in disapproval before remembering they have bigger problems right now.

“Is that a transporter pad?” he asks curiously. “Where does it lead?”

“My sleeping quarters,” Grantaire tells him.

“Why do you have a transporter between the bridge and your sleeping quarters…?”

“In case of emergencies like this one!” Grantaire snaps.

“It’s the next level in efficient laziness,” Bossuet explains. “Pretty soon he’ll probably just replace the pilot’s chair with a bed and then he’ll never have to move at all.”

“Shut up,” Grantaire says, stepping onto the pad.

“Wait!” Enjolras says. He steps onto the pad next to him. “I’m coming too. This is my fault, I should help fix it.”

Grantaire _dearly_ wants to make a quip about not expecting Enjolras to be so eager to go to his bedroom so soon, but even he figures this probably isn’t the time. He just nods instead.

Luckily, this transporter works pretty much instantaneously. Grantaire suspects any chances he has of a date would go flying out the window into the endless vacuum of space if he and Enjolras had to hover awkwardly, half-formed, for a second time that day. They materialise in his quarters with no mishaps, though Enjolras looks somewhat horrified by the mess, which makes the cluttered bridge look positively pristine.

“Sorry, I would’ve cleaned if I’d known I’d be a bringing a pretty blond back here,” Grantaire says before remembering that he’d decided against the bedroom joke only moments before. He curses himself for being so totally unable to pass up such an opportunity. Enjolras sighs.

“Look,” he says. “There’s a giant alien on your ship trying to eat us, and our only weapon against it is a bottle of cheap liquor.” Grantaire tries not to squawk in protest – whiskey from #276 is a lot more extravagant than what he usually buys. “Can we maybe save the flirting for later?”

He heads out of the room, leaving Grantaire gaping after him.

“Wait, wait, does that mean you’re actually willing to engage in flirting later? Like, that’s a thing we’re going to do?” he asks, hurrying to catch up. Enjolras shoots him a look. “Sorry, you’re right, priorities.”

It doesn’t take them long to reach their foe – its bulk is now so immense that it takes up most of the corridor leading to the bridge. This does give them something of an advantage, in that it is almost definitely now too big to turn around, and so cannot consume them from this angle.

“Now what?” Enjolras asks.

Grantaire presses a tender kiss to the bottle in his hands.

“I’m sorry, my love,” he murmurs to it. “You were meant for greater things than this.”

And he hurls it at the creature. The bottle smashes against its flank, soaking a small area of its fur in whiskey. Some of the fumes drift towards them and Grantaire mourns for what might have been.

“Holy shit,” Enjolras says after a moment. He sounds stunned. “It’s shrinking. It’s…actually shrinking.”

And it is. It’s still screeching angrily, but the sound gets quieter and quieter as its mouth and vocal chords shrink with the rest of it. It takes a few minutes, but soon it’s back to its original kind-of-but-not-really-like-a-rabbit form. It looks up at them mutinously.

“I’m going to remember this the next time someone tells me that I can’t solve all my problems with alcohol,” Grantaire says.

“We should take it back to its planet,” Enjolras says. “Before anything else goes wrong.”

“Agreed,” Grantaire says. “Also, it clearly still wants to eat us and only isn’t doing so because it’s small again. It needs to get its ass off my ship. I’ll just tell Joly to alter our course and-”

There’s a strange popping noise from somewhere near their feet. He and Enjolras blink at each other, and then look down to see that, where there had previously been one vaguely-rabbit-like creature, there are now two.

“…Huh,” Grantaire says.

_Pop. Pop. Pop._ Four. Eight. Sixteen.

“I _told_ you alcohol isn’t the opposite of water,” Enjolras says.

The popping is accelerating now. They both stare in mute horror until one of the creatures lunges forward and closes its teeth around the toe of Grantaire’s boot. He yelps and shakes his leg frantically until it flies off and lands in a pile of its furry kin with a muffled thump. It’s around then that the two of them realise that hundreds of tiny aliens are going to be, perhaps, even more dangerous than one oversized one.

“We should run,” Enjolras says. He grabs Grantaire’s hand and starts pulling him back down the corridor, despite the fact that this is Grantaire’s ship and Enjolras can’t possibly have any idea where they should run to. He’s clearly used to taking charge. Grantaire likes that. He also likes how much they look like the leading couple in an adventure movie at this moment. Then he remembers he should probably be saving his best friends. He switches the translator at his wrist to communicator mode and calls Joly.

“Bossuet, Joly, take the transporter and get to the shuttle!” he yells over the cacophony of popping coming from behind him.

“What’s happening?” Joly asks.

“…We’re abandoning ship,” Grantaire tells him mournfully.

By some miracle, they all make it to the shuttle without getting more than mildly nibbled, though Bossuet is pale-faced when he and Joly arrive.

“There’s so many of them, R!” he says, wide-eyed. “So many. I have seen hell and it is fluffy.”

“Let’s just get out of here before they use up all the oxygen,” Grantaire says, closing the shuttle door and preparing to launch it.

As the shuttle departs, they all look back to watch the ship behind them. They’ve barely made it a safe distance away when they see it start to bulge and tremble oddly, and then it literally just bursts at the seams. Debris and thousands of small furry aliens start drifting slowly outwards into the dark reaches of space. It’s really something of a spectacle. Grantaire thinks he sees some of his porn magazines amongst the maelstrom and regrets that old-fashioned paper-media phase he went through, because that was going to be awkward when they landed on the viewing panel of another ship at some time in the future. He realises his wallet is probably in there somewhere too. Shit.

“Farewell, the good ship Wine-Cask,” he says sadly, doing his best not to shed a tear. He’d slaved many hours at the drive-thru at Galactic Burger to buy that ship.

“Do you suppose those aliens can survive without oxygen?” Joly asks.

“Sure,” Bossuet says encouragingly as a few furry corpses bump against the shuttle’s windows. “I’m sure they’re fine.”

“What now, R?” Joly asks, turning to him.

“Now I guess we should get Enjolras back to his ship,” Grantaire says. “Set a course, would you?”

“And after that?” Bossuet asks. “Do we have to go live with your sister until we find another ship? Because she scares me, I don’t know if I can deal with that.”

“There’s room for you all on my ship, if you’ll have it,” Enjolras says. “And my friends and I will be sure to procure you a new ship of your own. It’s the least we can do, after…that.”

Grantaire goes and takes a seat next to him.

“So, hey, we’re out of imminent peril and we’ve got a few hours before we get to your ship,” he says. “Is now, like, an acceptable time for flirting?”

Enjolras looks at him with a half-smile and incredulously raised eyebrows.

“I just got your ship blown up, and you still want to flirt with me?” he asks.

“Well, after that, I’d say you owe me some hard-core flirting,” Grantaire says. “I mean it. I want eyelash-batting, hair-twirling, coy giggling, the works.”

Enjolras laughs and considers this for a moment.

“I think I like you,” he says finally. “Maybe we can just skip the flirting.”

And he leans over and plants a light kiss on Grantaire’s cheek. Grantaire stares blankly at him before feeling his face break into the goofiest grin ever to grace this quadrant of the galaxy. He punches the air in triumph. Enjolras rolls his eyes.

“It’s because I was so heroic, isn’t it?” Grantaire says.

“Yes,” Enjolras says. “The way you threw that bottle made me weak in the knees.”

“Yessssss.”

 


End file.
